Caribbean Women Writers (Z) (Women Writers of English Lives and Works) [Library Binding]

Harold Bloom (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0791044769 | ISBN-13: 978-0791044766 | Publication Date: May 1997

The past few decades have seen an explosion of writing by women from the Caribbean. From Antigua, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Trinidad - women of African, European, and mixed ancestry have explored and manipulated their complex matrix: of languages and subtle linguistic codes; of folk traditions and formal English schooling; of vital politics and tormented histories; of intoxicating natural beauty and devastating poverty. They have written of mothertongues and motherlands, of exile, of the boundaries of bodies, of the politics of owning and not owning themselves. Though worlds apart, writings as diverse as Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, published in 1966, and Jamaica Kincaid's Autobiography of My Mother, published 30 years later, nevertheless share a setting of shocking yet sinister beauty; a sense of the loss of a mother and the implications of this loss upon one's self; and a deeply resonant literary heritage. From Guyana's Beryl Gilroy to Haiti's Edwidge Danticat, Caribbean women are mingling the political with the lyrical in a quickly deepening new body of literature.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Once again, noteworthy critic Bloom (Yale and New York Univ. Graduate Sch.) has teamed with Chelsea House to create a literary series. This one is divided into six volumes, including the two-volume British Women Fiction Writers (to be reviewed in a forthcoming issue of LJ with Garland's Women Writers of Great Britain and Europe). Unfortunately, the remaining four volumes offer little that is new. Each volume is arranged alphabetically by writer (most of whom are already in the canon) and covers about a dozen authors in lengthy (seven- to 18-page) articles that provide a biographical statement, excerpts of critical opinion, and a bibliography of the writer's works. Each volume contains the same short introduction by Bloom focusing on the merits of feminist criticism. This duplication ignores the opportunity to explore the differences among women's cultural backgrounds and their works and sets up a mood that the extracted critical opinions do not follow. Appropriate only for public libraries lacking access to the indexes and journals where the criticism appears; the more inclusive A Library of Literary Criticism (Continuum, 1996) provides shorter and better-focused excerpts on more authors.?Neal Wyatt, Chesterfield P.L., Va.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Library Binding: 163 pages
• Publisher: Chelsea House Publications (May 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791044769
• ISBN-13: 978-0791044766
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,840,342 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)